Alakoulun kolmannen luokan oppilaiden kokemuksia mobiilioppimisesta

Tablet-laitteet ovat nopeasti yleistyneet opetuskäytössä. Tämän laadullisen tapaustutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää alakoulun kolmannen luokan oppilaiden kokemuksia tablet-laitteiden käytöstä haastattelun avulla. Haastattelun kohteena oli kaksi toisistaan tablet-laitteen käytön suhteen eroavaa luokkaa. Ensimmäisellä luokista tablet-laitteet olivat pääasiallinen opetuksen ja oppimisen väline ja toisella luokista tablet-laitteita käytettiin noin kerran kuukaudessa. Haastateltavat oppilaat valikoitiin esikyselyn perusteella. Haastattelujen pohjalta, molempien luokkien oppilaiden tablet-laitteiden koulukäyttö on pitkälti samankaltaista kuin perinteisempien oppimisvälineiden käyttö. Molemmilla luokilla oli oppilaita, jotka vastasivat suosivansa sähköisten oppimisympäristöjen sijaan perinteisempiä oppimisympäristöjä ja -välineitä. Tästä huolimatta tablet-laitteiden käyttö on oppilaiden mukaan pääasiassa innostavaa sekä toimintaa helpottavaa ja nopeuttavaa. Erityisesti matikkapelit erottuivat edukseen oppilaiden haastatteluvastauksissa. Myös aiemmissa tutkimuksissa matikkapelien hyödyt ovat korostuneet. Oppilaat vastasivat haastattelussa käyttävänsä mobiililaitteita koulun ulkopuolella pääasiassa viihdekäyttöön. Suurimmat erot tulivat esiin oppilaiden välisessä yksilöllisessä vapaa-ajan mobiililaitteiden käytössä. Toisaalta mobiililaitteiden parissa käytetty aika näyttää jakavan oppilaita enemmän ja vähemmän laitteita käyttäviin. Keskeisiä luokkien välisiä eroja olivat koetut ongelmatilanteet ja ongelmanratkaisutaidot. Mobiilioppimisen ratkaisutaidot olivat parempia paljon tablet-laitteita käyttävällä luokalla. Suurin osa oppilaiden kohtaamista ongelmista on heidän vaikutusmahdollisuutensa ulottumattomissa. Laitteet aiheuttivat myös häiriöitä vähän laitteita käyttävässä luokassa. Opettajan rooli mobiilioppimisessa ja sähköisten oppimisympäristöjen käytössä nousee monin tavoin keskeiseksi ongelmanratkaisusta ja ennakoinnista lähtien aina sisältöjen ja materiaalien suunnitteluun ja laitteen käytön opastukseen asti.

Paremman asiakaskokemuksen ja käytettävyyslähteisen lisäarvon tuottaminen design muutoksilla - tapaustutkimus hyvis.fi järjestelmään

Työn tarkoituksena on antaa Etelä-Karjalan sosiaali- ja terveyspiirin (Eksote) Hyvis –palvelun nettiportaalille muutosehdoituksia koskien nettisivujen ulkoasua, käytettävyyteen liittyviä seikkoja sekä ideoita brändinrakentamiseen verrattuna maailmalta löytyneisiin palkittuihin terveysalan sivustoihin. Työn tavoitteena on löytää mahdollisimman hyvä ohjenuora nettisivujen toiminnallisiin ja ulkoisiin tapoihin sekä käytänteihin, joiden ansiosta brändille voidaan luoda lisäarvoa nettisivujen välityksellä. Työn tuloksina tuli esiin sivujen kategorioinnin tärkeys, jolla voidaan selkeyttää sivujen rakennetta sekä se helpottaa sivuilla navigointia ja tiedonhakua. Kuvien käyttäminen linkkien ja tekstien yhteydessä oli tulosten mukaan suotavaa. Jokainen tarkasteltava sivu sisälsi responsiivisuuden sekä mobiili- ja tablettioptimoinnin, joten se oli yksi tärkeimmistä tutkimuksessa saaduista tuloksista. Sosiaalinen media oli myös kovasti käytössä jokaisen tutkittavan sivun kohdalla.

Parameter estimation for Chaotic or Stochastic Dynamics

Since its discovery, chaos has been a very interesting and challenging topic of research. Many great minds spent their entire lives trying to give some rules to it. Nowadays, thanks to the research of last century and the advent of computers, it is possible to predict chaotic phenomena of nature for a certain limited amount of time. The aim of this study is to present a recently discovered method for the parameter estimation of the chaotic dynamical system models via the correlation integral likelihood, and give some hints for a more optimized use of it, together with a possible application to the industry. The main part of our study concerned two chaotic attractors whose general behaviour is diff erent, in order to capture eventual di fferences in the results. In the various simulations that we performed, the initial conditions have been changed in a quite exhaustive way. The results obtained show that, under certain conditions, this method works very well in all the case. In particular, it came out that the most important aspect is to be very careful while creating the training set and the empirical likelihood, since a lack of information in this part of the procedure leads to low quality results.

Efficient Algorithms for Coastal Geographic Problems

The increasing performance of computers has made it possible to solve algorithmically problems for which manual and possibly inaccurate methods have been previously used. Nevertheless, one must still pay attention to the performance of an algorithm if huge datasets are used or if the problem iscomputationally difficult. Two geographic problems are studied in the articles included in this thesis. In the first problem the goal is to determine distances from points, called study points, to shorelines in predefined directions. Together with other in-formation, mainly related to wind, these distances can be used to estimate wave exposure at different areas. In the second problem the input consists of a set of sites where water quality observations have been made and of the results of the measurements at the different sites. The goal is to select a subset of the observational sites in such a manner that water quality is still measured in a sufficient accuracy when monitoring at the other sites is stopped to reduce economic cost. Most of the thesis concentrates on the first problem, known as the fetch length problem. The main challenge is that the two-dimensional map is represented as a set of polygons with millions of vertices in total and the distances may also be computed for millions of study points in several directions. Efficient algorithms are developed for the problem, one of them approximate and the others exact except for rounding errors. The solutions also differ in that three of them are targeted for serial operation or for a small number of CPU cores whereas one, together with its further developments, is suitable also for parallel machines such as GPUs.

Analysis of Automotive Cybersecurity - Attack surfaces and users’ privacy concerns

Modern automobiles are no longer just mechanical tools. The electronics and computing services they are shipping with are making them not less than a computer. They are massive kinetic devices with sophisticated computing power. Most of the modern vehicles are made with the added connectivity in mind which may be vulnerable to outside attack. Researchers have shown that it is possible to infiltrate into a vehicle’s internal system remotely and control the physical entities such as steering and brakes. It is quite possible to experience such attacks on a moving vehicle and unable to use the controls. These massive connected computers can be life threatening as they are related to everyday lifestyle. First part of this research studied the attack surfaces in the automotive cybersecurity domain. It also illustrated the attack methods and capabilities of the damages. Online survey has been deployed as data collection tool to learn about the consumers’ usage of such vulnerable automotive services. The second part of the research portrayed the consumers’ privacy in automotive world. It has been found that almost hundred percent of modern vehicles has the capabilities to send vehicle diagnostic data as well as user generated data to their manufacturers, and almost thirty five percent automotive companies are collecting them already. Internet privacy has been studies before in many related domain but no privacy scale were matched for automotive consumers. It created the research gap and motivation for this thesis. A study has been performed to use well established consumers privacy scale – IUIPC to match with the automotive consumers’ privacy situation. Hypotheses were developed based on the IUIPC model for internet consumers’ privacy and they were studied by the finding from the data collection methods. Based on the key findings of the research, all the hypotheses were accepted and hence it is found that automotive consumers’ privacy did follow the IUIPC model under certain conditions. It is also found that a majority of automotive consumers use the services and devices that are vulnerable and prone to cyber-attacks. It is also established that there is a market for automotive cybersecurity services and consumers are willing to pay certain fees to avail that.

Improving purchasing process for small purchases at a manufacturing company in chemical industry

This thesis was conducted on assignment by a multinational chemical corporation as a case study. The purpose of this study is to find ways to improve the purchasing process for small purchases at the case company. The improvements looked after are mainly cost and time savings. Purchasing process is the process that starts from the requisition of goods or services and ends when the invoice is paid. In this thesis the purchases with value less than 1000€ are considered to be small. The theoretical framework of the thesis consists of general theoretical view of costs and performance of the purchasing process, different types of purchasing processes and a model for improving purchasing processes. The categorization to small and large purchases is the most important followed by the division between direct and indirect purchases. Also models that provide more strategic perspective for categorization were found to be useful. Auditing and managerial control are important parts of the purchasing process. When considering the transaction costs of purchasing from the costs–benefits perspective large and small purchases should not have the same processes. Purchasing cards, e-procurement and vendor managed inventory are seen as an alternative to the traditional purchasing process. The empirical data collection was done by interviewing the company employees that take part of the purchasing process in their daily work. The interviews had open-ended questions and the answers were coded and analyzed. The results consist of process description and assessment as well as suggestions for potential improvements. At the case company the basic purchasing process was similar to the traditional purchasing process that is entirely done with computers and online. For some categories there was already more sophisticated e-procurement solutions in use. To improve the current e-procurement based solutions elimination of authorization workflow and better information exchange can be seen as potential improvements for most of the case purchases. Purchasing cards and a lightweight form of vendor managed inventory can be seen as potential improvements for some categories. Implementing the changes incurs at least some cost and the benefits might be hard to measure. This thesis has revealed that the small purchases have potential for significant cost and time savings at the case company.

Litteracitet i fem högstadieungdomars en-till-en-datorpraktiker

The study focuses on five lower secondary school pupils’ daily use of their one-toone computers, the overall aim being to investigate literacy in this form of computing. Theoretically, the study is rooted in the New Literacy tradition with an ecological perspective, in combination with socio-semiotic theory in a multimodal perspective. New Literacy in the ecological perspective focuses on literacy practices and place/space and on the links between them. Literacy is viewed as socially based, in specific situations and in recurring social practices. Socio-semiotic theory embodying the multimodal perspective is used for the text analysis. The methodology is known as socio-semiotic ethnography. The ethnographic methods encompass just over two years of fieldwork with participating observations of the five participants’ computing activities at home, at school and elsewhere. The participants, one boy and two girls from the Blue (Anemone) School and two girls from the White (Anemone) School, were chosen to reflect a broad spectrum in terms of sociocultural and socioeconomic background. The study shows the existence of a both broad and deep variation in the way digital literacy features in the participants’ one-to-one computing. These variations are associated with experience in relation to the home, the living environment, place, personal qualities and school. The more varied computer usage of the Blue School participants is connected with the interests they developed in their homes and living environments and in the computing practices undertaken in school. Their more varied usage of the computer is reflected in their broader digital literacy repertoires and their greater number and variety of digital literacy abilities. The Blue School participants’ text production is more multifaceted, covers a wider range of subjects and displays a broader palette of semiotic resources. It also combines more text types and the texts are generally longer than those of the White School participants. The Blue School girls have developed a text culture that is close to that of the school. In their case, there is clear linkage between school-initiated and self-initiated computing activities, while other participants do not have the same opportunities to link and integrate self-initiated computing activities into the school context. It also becomes clear that the Blue School girls can relate and adapt their texts to different communicative practices and recipients. In addition, the study shows that the Blue School girls have some degree of scope in their school practice as a result of incorporating into it certain communicative practices that they have developed in nonschool contexts. Quite contrary to the hopes expressed that one-to-one computing would reduce digital inequality, it has increased between these participants. Whether the same or similar results apply in a larger perspective, on a more structural level, is a question that this study cannot answer. It can only draw attention to the need to investigate the matter. The study shows in a variety of ways that the White School participants do not have the same opportunity to develop their digital literacy as the Blue School participants. In an equivalence perspective, schools have a compensational task to perform. It is abundantly clear from the study that investing in one-to-one projects is not enough to combat digital inequality and achieve the digitisation goals established for school education. Alongside their investments in technology, schools need to develop a didactic that legitimises and compensates for the different circumstances of different pupils. The compensational role of schools in this connection is important not only for the present participants but also for the community at large, in that it can help to secure a cohesive, open and democratic society.